Deva Victrix: The Brother
by moonlighten
Summary: Michael's quiet life begins to change, more rapidly than he'd like. (One-sided Northern Ireland/femIceland. Four chapters; complete. Human AU; fantasy setting. Part of the Deva Victrix series.)
1. Chapter 1

_This fic covers Michael's POV on, and reactions to, a number of the events that occur during the main story of Deva Victrix._

 _This chapter covers his reaction to the events of Deva Victrix, chapter 10, and Prince Francis' first visit to his home._

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Virtually the only part of his work that Michael actually enjoys is sweeping the street in front of the apothecary after lunch, which, for reasons that escape his understanding, Dylan insists is a vital part of his daily routine.

The draw isn't so much the sweeping itself – which is dull, repetitive, and tends to make Michael's back ache – but that every so often, if he's very lucky, Mr Bondevik will set Emilía to performing the same task at the same hour.

Today is a good day, and when he steps outside with his broom, he glances towards Mr Bondevik's shop and sees Emilía already standing there, leaning on her own, far less tattered brush.

As is their occasional ritual whenever the stars (and their respective guardians' whims) correctly align, Michael raises his eyebrows at her in a way that is meant to convey the sentiment, ' _This is a waste of both our lives, isn't it? It's a fucking_ road _; it'll get covered in muck and dead leaves again a few minutes after we've finished, regardless. I'm sure Dylan thinks that he has to get me to do all this pointless crap so I don't have enough time to become involved with the wrong people, the type who will get me addicted to dragonweed which I'll have to turn to crime in order to afford, inevitably leading to my demise in a gutter at a tragically young age_.'

Emilía's answering eye roll, Michael would like to believe, indicates her full agreement.

He gives her a wry smile that says, ' _What_ is _a tragedy is that we're stuck here, futilely pushing dirt around, when we could be…_ " Here, Michael's imagination fails him for a moment, as he never really does anything save his training, running errands for Dylan and Alasdair, and his weekly trip to the Lost Antler. ' _Lying in bed eating bread and jam, and reading books that have nothing to do with herbs_ ,' is his best attempt, seeing as though it was how he had spent the remains of his morning, luxuriating in the unusual freedom afforded by both of his brothers being otherwise occupied.

Emilía's mouth opens slightly, on what Michael fears might be a shocked gasp.

' _Not together, of course_ ,' Michael hurriedly assures her with a desperate flap of his hand. ' _In our own separate beds, with our own separate books about –_ "

Emilía shakes her head and then quickly turns away, busying herself with her sweeping.

' _This is why you have no friends_ ,' Michael tells himself sternly, giving his own brush a disconsolate shove across the cobbles. ' _You can't even have a_ silent _conversation with someone without fucking it up. No doubt Mr Bondevik's eventually going to get wind that you accidentally propositioned his daughter, then he'll come round and threaten you with that illegal pistol that Aly knows he has but has been pretending he doesn't because he still feels embarrassed about that whole head-butting thing last year, and Aly will be forced to arrest him._ '

Michael is still musing on the likely repercussions of Mr Bondevik's hypothetical imprisonment an indeterminate length of time later when Dylan stomps up behind him taps him on the shoulder.

At first, Michael expects to be gently chided on the piss poor job he's been doing of street beautification, but his brother instead says, "What do you think could have caused all this commotion?"

Michael's honest answer of, "What commotion?" makes his brother regard him with mild concern.

"Are you having that trouble with your ears again?" Dylan asks. "I've still got some of that vinegar solution left over from last time if you are."

"My ears are fine." And now he's been roused from his consuming thoughts about how he, Aly and Dylan have likely all been doomed to a shared future of lonely bachelorhood by their divergent yet equally damning quirks of personality, Michael can hear distant cheering. "I was just concentrating so hard on my work that I didn't notice it before. I can hear it now."

Dylan doesn't appear entirely convinced by Michael's claims of aural health. "It was loud enough to wake me up," he says, anxiously pressing the back of one hand against Michael's forehead for an instant, checking his temperature.

It clearly didn't wake him up very well, as Dylan still looks more than half asleep: his eyes red and puffy, mouth slack, and pillow creases etched into his cheek.

"Honestly, Dyl, there's nothing wrong with –"

Michael is interrupted by the sound of pounding feet, and suddenly little Joe Hunter bursts out of the alley that connects to Bow Lane, running towards his ma's ironmongery like his arse is on fire. "There's a great big carriage coming this way," he screams as he tears past them. "The horses are wearing fancy hats and everything."

"Fancy hats?" Michael asks his brother, who is extremely knowledgeable about the eccentricities of nobles due to his partiality for books that use meticulously researched royal courts as a backdrop for their characters' even more meticulously chronicled shagging.

"I presume he means those feather plumes they sometimes put in their bridles," Dylan says. "It's more of a Gallian fashion, though; never really caught on over here. There are a few noble families in Highgate whose ancestors originally moved over here after Gallia was conquered but before Britannia was, so I suppose it could belong to one of them."

That seems unlikely to Michael. Usually, whenever Highgate lords and ladies decide that they want to daringly slum it Old Town for a while, they try and draw as little attention to themselves as possible. They attempt to roughen their accents and wear plain clothes in an insultingly poor state of repair in their efforts to 'fit in'.

"Perhaps one of our neighbours has come into a lot of money," he suggests instead to Dylan. "And they wanted to announce it by rolling up with their new fancy-hatted horses before they pack up and retire to Lusitania or something."

He and Dylan trade increasingly outlandish theories back and forth until the carriage finally rounds the corner into their street, whereupon Dylan says with hushed awe, "That's the Imperial banner it's flying. I think it must have come from the palace." He chuckles dryly. "Perhaps the prince decided to give Aly a lift home to make up for dragging him out of his bed this morning."

Michael very much doubts that, too. From all that he's ever read, and seen from the behaviour of their occasional Highgate tourists, highborn types don't care a great deal about disrupting the lives of the hoi polloi.

When Corporal Jones had called into the apothecary earlier, to reassure a frantic Dylan that Alasdair hadn't been the victim of a kidnapping as he'd been well on the way to convincing himself of, she hadn't even been able to tell them _why_ the prince had demanded that their brother had to be the one to aid him, despite all the other guards who were _actually_ on duty at the time.

Alasdair's hitherto unmentioned role in a top-secret mission for the Gallian royal family had been Amelia's best guess; that their brother's reputation as a guard was superlative enough to have reached even the governor's ears was Dylan's.

Michael had simply concluded that the prince had wanted what he wanted for some reason that he would probably never deign to reveal to anyone – Alasdair included – and hadn't given a single thought or shit about how it might impact anyone's day but his own.

To his surprise, Alasdair does step out of the carriage after it draws to a halt – and after the coachman has proudly announced to the world at large exactly who the carriage belongs to, in case there was any doubt remaining – though his appearance is much more in line with Michael's expectations. His skin has a decidedly grey tinge, and his posture is even more appalling than it normally is, leaving his shoulders hunched up so high that they're almost brushing his ears.

"I can't believe he went to see a prince wearing _those_ trousers," Dylan hisses in horrified tones. "The seat's so thin that you can practically see his entire arse through it. I wanted to turn them into dishcloths, but, no, 'I can get another few months of wear out of them,' he tells me. A few more months of flashing –"

Dylan's words fade into a thin wheeze when the coachman helps the carriage's other occupant disembark, and he clutches at Michael's arm like he's trying to stop himself keeling over from the sheer wonder of it all.

Although he doesn't particularly resemble the woodcuts Michael has seen of him (which give him the sombre air of a much older man, and, for some reason, always have him seated on a rearing horse) there's no mistaking him for anyone other than Prince Francis.

The golden prince, they always call him in the periodicals, and everything about him does seem to shine: his hair, his skin, and his teeth as he briefly flashes them at the crowd assembling at the far end of the street, bared in a dazzling smile.

What Michael sees next – and he's fairly sure, given their respective distances and angles of view, that no-one else does – seems as though it might explain why the prince had apparently taken an interest in his brother.

Just for a moment, and perhaps inspired by near-transparent trousers as his gaze meanders downwards, the prince looks at Alasdair as though he'd like to smother him in honey and then do unspeakable things to his person.

After he's got over his initial shock at the thought of anyone being thus inspired by Alasdair – whose resemblance to the scarecrow Claire keeps planted in her vegetable patch is merely more pronounced than usual, and not driven by the unusual circumstances of his morning – Michael finds that the idea has a certain righteous appeal to it.

As Alasdair likely wouldn't know how to do unspeakable things to anyone even with the aid of explanatory notes and helpful diagrams (and, indeed, it's never been definitely proven to either Michael or Dylan's satisfaction that he'd even _want_ to), the prince is bound to be disappointed in whatever burgeoning desires he might be entertaining.

It could only do nobleborns like the prince some good, Michael suspects, to have their desires thwarted now and again, because if they were, then maybe they'd think twice about throwing their weight around and disrupting people's hard-earned rest in the future.


	2. Chapter 2

_This is set during the events of an absolutely lovely Llewellyn/Dylan fic nekoian wrote, during which Llewellyn platonically spends the night at the apothecary (though this turned out to mostly be centred around Brittonic courtship rituals)._  
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"It feels strange," Michael says gloomily, "having someone else in the house."

Dylan lays down his dishcloth, and tilts his head a little so that one of his ears is inclined towards the small creaks and muffled thumps that indicate Llewellyn is moving around in his bedroom upstairs. His cheeks redden, and if he were just about anyone else, Michael would think that he was probably picturing Llewellyn changing into his night things.

As Dylan is Dylan, and thus prey to all the condition's attendant flights of poetic fancy and syrupy romanticism, it seems vastly more likely that he's musing on twaddle like Llewellyn's feet 'caressing the floorboards' and 'the music of his tread'.

"I think it's nice," Dylan says with a faint smile. "Besides, it's not as though we _never_ get visitors, is it. Gabs is over here all the time, and you never complain about that."

"That's different; Gabs is practically family." Would probably _be_ family already, if only Arthur wasn't so ridiculously neurotic, and also a complete idiot. "I don't have to be on my best behaviour with her here. I can swear, burp, scratch my arse –"

"I hope you don't scratch your arse in the kitchen whatever the circumstances, Michael." Dylan frowns at him meaningfully. "It's very unhygienic."

To be fair, Michael has yet to feel the need to either burp or scratch any part of himself encumbered by clothes when Gabriella has been visiting, but he's unwilling to allow fact to interfere with the all-important principle.

"Let's not get sidetracked by arses," he says. "Arses are just a smokescreen concealing the point of the matter, which is that you can't really be yourself with a guest around, can you?"

Dylan picks up his cloth again and then swirls it dreamily around the inside of a cup. He ends up with more soap suds splattered across his bare forearms and the underside of his chin than where they're supposed to be.

"I think you're maybe just a better version of yourself, rather than someone else entirely. It's good to put another person's wants and needs ahead of your own for a while," says Dylan, who has never required any special occasion to do exactly that, as far as Michael's aware. "I like entertaining. It was lovely having tea with the prince the other day. A real treat."

The best Michael can truthfully claim is that the prince's visit hadn't been as excruciating as he might have expected. Not that he'd had chance to expect very much, as he'd barely had more than a minute or two to contemplate such a thing between the prince turning up on their doorstep and Dylan inviting him in.

What he had had chance to imagine, in that brief spell, was the prince demanding truffles and caviar after turning his nose up at Dylan's carefully blended tea, ordering them all around like servants, and basically holding court thereafter.

He was pleasantly surprised that the prince not only praised Dylan's tea, but also ceded the floor to him without any obvious hint of misgiving or annoyance. What was less surprising, and distinctly more unpleasant to witness, was that the prince continued to stare at Alasdair throughout as though he was also on the afternoon's menu.

Michael wonders for a moment whether he should mention as much to Dylan, who was likely too distracted at the time by the novelty of having such a distinguished captive audience for his stories to notice any leering going on. However, Michael has read the same books as his brother – he's a quick reader; sometimes there's no option other than staring at the ceiling – and he knows that liaisons between the nobility and commoners only ever end in broken hearts and, dependent on the genders involved, a royal bastard .

Granted, there's no chance of Alasdair being abandoned, full of shame and regrets, to birth the secret heir to the throne in a secluded monastery, but the possibility of heartbreak remains. Princes always have some marriage prospect or other squirreled away, betrothed since the instant of each other's births, whom they have no intention of giving up no matter how vigorously they might sow their noble oats elsewhere.

It's only a very short moment, though, as Michael knows that Alasdair will remain oblivious to any and all ravenous looks, and if the prince were to make himself plain at any time, then doubtless Alasdair would very kindly but very firmly turn him down, just as he has every single proposition – and they're hardly infrequent – Michael has ever seen being made to him.

Dylan would just worry himself, regardless of all the prior evidence that would suggest it unnecessary, so Michael decides to keep his observation to himself.

"It was all right, I suppose," he says, belatedly picking up the thread of conversation Dylan had left dangling. "And I guess I'm going to have to get used to the bard being around more, aren't I? If you two are going to start courting."

Dylan wheels around suddenly, his eyes shocked wide. "We're not… I haven't…" He twists the dishcloth anxiously between his hands as he alternately spits forth then gulps back his words. "Did Aly tell you that we were?" he eventually manages to eke out with something approaching coherence.

As Alasdair's obliviousness is even more impenetrable when it comes to the romantic inclinations of others, Michael had thought Dylan's courtship must be a done deal otherwise his oldest brother wouldn't have even considered the possibility.

"Aye," he says, "but I'm guessing he was wrong about that?"

Dylan nods emphatically. "I'm not saying I wouldn't want to, if my circumstances were different, but courtship isn't just… being with someone, Michael. It's a prelude to marriage, and I'm hardly a good prospect for marriage, am I?"

From what Michael's heard, Arthur had said exactly the same thing to Gabriella when she asked if she could begin courting him. He couldn't understand the objection then, and he doesn't understand Dylan's now.

"Why not?" he asks. "You own a shop, know your letters, have all your own teeth, and your face isn't likely to scare any horses. I don't see what the problem is."

Dylan extricates one hand from the tightly-wrung dishcloth, and then begins marking off Michael's arguments on his fingers.

"I own a shop that breaks even on a good week," he says, holding up his thumb. "Llewellyn knows his letters, too, so it's hardly something essential I could bring to a partnership." He lifts his index finger. "The teeth, I'll grant you," his middle finger unfurls slowly, "though it's not really a unique selling point. And I don't think the horse thing really needs elaborating on, do you? That's pretty much self-explanatory."

Michael studies his brother a little more closely than is his typical wont; his mass of freckles, snub nose and perpetually watery eyes. He doesn't think he's in any position to accurately judge the relative attractiveness of his siblings, but what he can say with absolute certainty is that Dylan has a very kind face.

"It was meant to be a compliment," he says.

Dylan chuckles without humour. "And about the best I can ever hope for," he says under his breath, and then very quickly sets out on a conversational tangent. "All material objections aside, I don't think I'd be able to court someone properly, anyhow.

"Courtship's never been properly codified; I can't just read up on it in a book. The details are supposed to be passed down from one's parents, and Ma wouldn't let me listen when she taught them to Cait and Aly. She thought I was too young and too…" He presses his lips together so tightly that most of the colour is forced out of them. "Anyway, Aly doesn't remember the first one of them, because, of course, he wasn't in the slightest bit interested, then or now."

Here is where Michael and Dylan's views of their brother have always diverged; why they'll likely never come to a consensus regarding Alasdair's proclivities until they're proved beyond reasonable doubt (which, Michael hopes, will not include a practical demonstration of any sort).

Dylan is convinced that the whole debacle with Lukas Bondevik had arisen because Mr Bondevik had read too much into what was, from Alasdair's point of view, nothing more than a perfectly platonic relationship. Michael, on the other hand, remembers that his brother was just about as giddy as he's capable of being about the long hours they spent together, their exclusory and intense conversations at the Lost Antler, and found just as many flimsy pretexts to touch Mr Bondevik and Mr Bondevik found to touch him.

If things had carried on in the same vein, then perhaps they would eventually have become clear enough that even Alasdair could have seen them for what they were, but they hadn't. They'd come to an abrupt end with the punch up outside Mr Bondevik's apothecary shop, and the year of mutual silence that followed had rendered the question of 'interest' completely moot, as well as unanswered to anyone's satisfaction.

Even if it had been, it wouldn't have magically implanted the knowledge of how to properly court someone in Alasdair's brain, so likely Dylan would have still found himself in exactly the same predicament he is now.

"Don't the bards get taught all the courtship rules, anyway?" Michael thinks he remembers reading something along those lines in one of Da's books, if nothing else. "So they can advise orphans and the like? Can't you just ask Llewellyn?"

Dylan gives a hurried shake of his head. "I believe Llewellyn's master died before he finished his training, so he might not have been taught them himself. And, if I ask…" He pales slightly. "He's going to get hold of the wrong end of the stick whichever way he takes the question, isn't he?"

"You could just skip the whole courtship thing entirely," says Michael, who's always thought the whole process seems needlessly complicated, anyway, even without knowing all of its precise ins and outs. "Most people do, right?"

Dylan looks at him as though he's just suggested he should go outside and stick his head down their privy. "I want to do it properly, Michael; like Ma and Da did. I want what –" Dylan claps his free hand hard over his mouth, holding back the words; fingers clawed and digging deep into his fleshy cheeks. He takes deep breaths through his nose, clearly fighting to regain his equilibrium.

"All things considered," he says in a shockingly calm voice, once he feels equal to dropping his hand again, "I think it's better if I just concentrate on being the best friend I can possibly be to Llewellyn. Maybe… Maybe, if I'm very lucky, he might come to want something different, but I shouldn't think for a moment that courtship's going to be a part of that."


	3. Chapter 3

_This is set just after the events of chapter 21 of Deva Victrix (and also a year before that)._  
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Two days after the head-butting incident, Alasdair's face was still purpled with bruises, Mr Bondevik looked like he was gestating a large chicken egg under the skin of his forehead, and Michael had his first and last conversation with Emilía.

Alasdair had awoken that morning seemingly infused with great purpose – although, it later transpired, not a great deal of good sense – and had announced after breakfast that he was going to 'sort things out with Lukas once and for all'.

Dylan had agreed that yes, that was a fine idea, and, yes, it really was for the best, but, still, when Alasdair set out for Mr Bondvik's apothecary, he'd dragged Michael out to stand on the front step of their own so they could 'keep an eye' on their brother.

"I don't think this is going to end well," he said in-between nervous little nips at his thumb nail.

At first, it looked as though Dylan's pessimism was groundless, because when Mr Bondevik stepped out of his shop in answer to Alasdair's knock, they greeted each other with perfect civility. Mr Bondevik offered what looked to be a friendly smile of welcome, and Alasdair – whose badly split top lip had temporarily reduced his range of facial expressions down to slight variations around the theme of deadpan – returned a courteous nod.

And for the next few minutes that followed, they seemed to chat quite pleasantly, but then, all of a sudden, an ill wind seemingly began to blow. In response to some remark of Alasdair's– inaudible due to distance for the most part, but Michael hadn't needed to hear it clearly to know that it was insultingly blunt, nonetheless, because Alasdair had absolutely no sense of tact – Mr Bondevik's expression curdled, souring like days old milk.

He snapped back something equally indistinct, and jabbed one fingertip into the centre of Alasdair's chest.

Dylan bit clean through his nail with a loud click as his teeth clashed together. "Oh, dear," he said.

Both Dylan and Arthur had told Michael that Alasdair had had a nasty temper when they were younger, prone to random acts of violence, vicious teasing, and the throwing of completely undeserving people into ponds. The Alasdair who had, after a fashion, raised Michael had either calmed with age, or else worked out all of his aggression during his work hours, because he was mostly just prone to being grumpy and argumentative, with only very sporadic forays into being a rude, insensitive dick.

Thankfully, it appeared that the more mature Alasdair was in the coachman's seat of his mind that day, because he simply took gentle hold of Mr Bondevik's hand and eased it away.

Mr Bondevik's other hand was raised in an instant to assume jabbing duty in place of its fallen ally.

Alasdair's back, very slowly, started to straighten up out of its habitual slouch.

"Oh, shit," Dylan said, his own shoulders stiffening. "Someone should do something before one of them gets hurt."

Being that someone, of course, fell to Dylan. who could no more keep from bodily throwing himself between Alasdair and any punch that might be aimed his way than Alasdair could him on those very rare occasions that their positions were reversed.

Mr Bondevik glanced at him as he drew near, gave him a once-over, and then obviously dismissed him from his thoughts entirely, returning all of his attention to Alasdair.

Michael guessed it was a perfectly natural reaction, because Dylan was short, plump, and usually wore the faintly apologetic expression of a person who felt as though, wherever they might currently be standing, they were taking up a place in the world that someone else would probably make better use of.

But _he_ could be vicious. Pushed in the right way, at the right time, and with the right force, he fought with all the ferocity of a bear protecting its cubs, and wasn't above using his teeth and nails in the same way as one, if it came to that. (Or utilising a well-timed knee to the bollocks, which Michael supposed bears didn't often resort to, but no simile was perfect.)

Apparently not content to be ignored, Dylan politely tapped Mr Bondevik on the shoulder. He wheeled around in response, and that brought his pointed finger out of contact with Alasdair's chest and into the hollow of Dylan's throat.

And then all the hells broke loose.

The doors that weren't cracked at Mr Bondevik's shout of, "He doesn't need you to fight his battles for him," were flung open with abandon when Alasdair bellowed, "Don't you fucking dare touch him," and their neighbours all poked their heads out with interest.

There was little better to liven up the dull, crawling early hours of a workday than a bit of impromptu street theatre.

Alasdair pushed Mr Bondevik back a step; one fist raised, but only in warning. Then Mr Bondevik called Alasdair a 'eunuch' at the top of his lungs, and Dylan didn't even give him chance to take another breath before he punched him.

The resulting scuffle very quickly drew in extra participants on either side from amongst the gathering crowd, and as a result was so loud that Michael wasn't aware that Emilía had approached him until she said, "I can't believe they're doing this."

She didn't sound scared or even anxious, but spoke in the tones of someone mortified that their father was making a complete spectacle of himself in front of practically everyone they knew.

Michael, who was experiencing a very similar feeling in duplicate, replied with a heartfelt, "Neither can I."

Emilía nodded, but didn't seem inclined to add more, and Michael, in that moment, could bring to mind nothing _to_ add. (Beyond perhaps remarking that his brothers looked to have the best fighting form of anyone in the fracas, anyway, and that didn't exactly seem appropriate given the circumstances.)

Michael liked to think, though, that that silent moment of shared embarrassment over having relatives – that common sentiment – might just help to draw them a tiny bit closer, and he promised himself that next time they talked, he'd build on that small foundation and manage to get out two sentences instead of just one.  
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Michael would also like to think that he and Emilía are like the heroes and heroines in some of the more dramatic of Dylan's romance novels. The kind who aren't kept apart by the lack of the penultimate chapter's convenient windfall or their inexplicable failure to sit down and have an actual honest conversation with each other, but by blood debts, and anguish, and, most importantly, their feuding families.

In those books, the final act's resolution was generally brought about by a brave stand by the hero and/or heroine – with optional sword in hand – in which the strength of their love thawed the cold hearts of the respective families' matriarchs and/or patriarchs. Centuries' old grudges were thereafter forgotten, permission for courtship granted all round, and everyone held hands and skipped happily off towards the wedding on the final page.

He doubts a single one of even those courageous souls would have ever got their happy ending if they'd had to deal instead with Alasdair, because his heart isn't made of ice, but fucking _stone_.

"No," Alasdair says, scowling at nothing in particular, "I'm not going to try and apologise to Lukas again. The first twenty times were humiliating enough."

"But you're keeping me and Emilía apart!"

Michael means it to be an impassioned cry, but to his own humiliation, it sounds more like a whine, which doubtless justifies the slightly horrified look Alasdair gives him in response.

It also explains his brother's sighed, "Gods above," and the frustrated-looking pinch he gives to the bridge of his nose, but probably not the shuffling little dance of shifting weight he performs in his chair afterwards.

That, he's sure, is due to whatever fresh injury he'd managed to inflict on his back during his afternoon's visit to the governor's palace. The one that, by a mutual accord reached over many years of growling annoyance on Alasdair's part and anguished fretting on Dylan's, they'll all pretend never happened unless Alasdair happens to fall to the floor and beg for the succour of arnica liniment and willowbark tea.

In retrospect, it probably wasn't the best time for Michael to have brought up the ever vexatious subject of Mr Bondevik.

"Look, Mikey, have I ever told you can't be friends with Emilía?" Alasdair says eventually, sounding very weary.

Michael shakes his head.

"And, leaving aside what happened between him and me, Lukas is a reasonable man, so I'm sure he's never told Emilía that she can't be friends with you, either," Alasdair says. "Maybe she... Maybe she just doesn't want to be."

Maybe, but Michael's sure it's something more than that. She always smiles when she sees him, and she always seems happy to join in the silent conversations they take part in over their brooms. Her father might not be stopping them from talking, but maybe she might just be as shy as Michael himself.

The only way he's going to find out, though, is if he's brave in his own way. He might not have to pick up a sword, but he will have to learn how to wield his words well enough that he can be the one to approach her and see if she wants to have another conversation out loud.


	4. Chapter 4

_Set following the events of a lovely fic nekoian wrote in which Michael tried and failed to play football and embarrassed himself in front of Emilia._  
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When Michael was eight years old, Arthur and Dylan had been seized with a sudden concern for the state of his immortal soul.

At least, that's what they'd told the High Priest, but, in retrospect, Michael presumes it was rather more the state of his religious education that worried them as all of his siblings seem to consider the gods about as superfluous to their lives as a worm would a fine pair of riding boots.

Whatever their motives, Michael had been dragged off to Silent God's Temple once a week to listen in horror to sermons about the grim inevitability of death and the endless, lonely night that awaited him if he didn't adhere to the Silent God's decrees to his followers, which were complex, contradictory, and so numerous that they filled a book that likely outweighed Michael himself at that time.

Over the six months this enforced piety endured, Michael not only became so scared of the blackness behind his own eyelids that he could barely sleep at night, but increasingly convinced that it was impossible to do so much as breathe without contradicting the book's edicts.

Such thinking inevitably lead to fainting spells that had Dylan fretting about a wasting illness for several weeks until he finally managed to badger a tearful Michael – who had come to think of the Silent God as an immense, heavenly playground bully who would smite him for tattling – into confessing their true cause.

The experiment was thus deemed a failure, and Michael was thereafter left theologically untutored. The fear of the dark persisted for a few years, but otherwise lacking any impetus, evidence or encouragement to believe, he simply drifted into the agnosticism tending towards atheism which is the default Kirkland position on matters spiritual.

Even so, every so often, he still finds himself wondering if he has been cursed by the gods, because the purposeless vagaries of an uncaring universe don't seem as though they could perpetrate such sustained cruelty against a single person as Michael has had to suffer lately.

More than anything else, he wants to curl up in his bed, pull his blankets over his head, and sleep until such time as the world, hypothetical deities, or random fucking chance is more kindly disposed towards him.

Failing that, telling Mr Elliot to piss off and shove his bottle of piles treatment up his arse would at least make him feel a little less irritated about being disturbed from the perfectly good sulk that he'd settled himself into over the course of the afternoon.

As Mr Elliot is the sort of man who would take that as advice rather than an invective, coming from someone wearing grey apothecary's robes, Michael restrains himself.

"Two drops twice a day, Mr Elliot," he says instead, though he can't quite summon up the smile that Dylan insists is an integral part of proper customer service. "Make sure you–"

"Apply it with a clean rag and wash my hands afterwards," Mr Elliot says, loudly enough that he can likely be heard clear across the street outside.

Not that the man seems to care about such things; according to Alasdair, he talks about his troubles with his 'back passage' with anyone who stands still long enough to listen.

After Mr Elliot has paid his three coppers and left, Michael slumps down in his chair, and sighs despondently. Then, he sighs miserably.

Dylan, seated at the other end of the counter, remains completely focused on his account book, mouth set in an arse-like pucker as he tries to force the recalcitrant numbers into doing his bidding.

Michael clears his throat, and then sighs out every speck of air in his lungs, letting a quiet, "Fuck," flow out on the last of it for good measure.

Dylan twitches like a man who's had a pin stuck into one of his most delicate areas, and then turns to look at Michael in concern. "Are you okay?" he asks. "Are you feeling feverish again? Is your throat sore? I can make up some more of that linctus, if you like."

Dylan's linctus tastes like something that's been scraped out of the privy. Michael quickly says, "No, I feel fine now, thanks. Physically, at least."

That sort of statement is generally as effective a bait to Dylan as a maggot is to a fish, and he tends to be just as incapable of keeping himself from chasing after it. Michael can't very well go _complaining_ to his brothers about each and every setback his life throws at him, but if Dylan _asks_ , it wouldn't be polite to not answer him.

True to form, Dylan leans across to gentle the hair out of Michael's eyes, and then says, "Has something upset you?"

"Only that I'm going to die alone." Michael allows himself to lean into his brother's touch for a fraction of a second before batting his hand away out of habit. "And probably a virgin."

One corner of Dylan's mouth quirks upwards slightly. "What makes you think that?"

"Emilia thinks I'm a twat."

"I'm sure she doesn't," Dylan says immediately, his tone soothing, though it becomes decidedly less so as he adds, "Did something happen whilst you were out with your friends earlier?"

Michael chuckles humourlessly. "They're not my friends. I don't think they even like me very much." The events of the abortive football game begin to bubble up to the surface of his mind again, but he pushes them down again ruthlessly. He'd really rather not remember the precise details; they're far too mortifying. "I just... I either don't know what to say to them, or what I _do_ say comes out all wrong. Especially when Emilia's around. I can't usually talk to her _at_ all, and... It turns out that's probably a _good_ thing, because I just fuck it all up when I do."

"Mikey, I know this probably isn't going to sound very comforting right now, but just because you fucked up today, it doesn't have to mean tomorrow's ruined. And even if Emilia doesn't like you, it doesn't mean that no other lass or lad ever will." Dylan groans softly and rubs at his eyes with his knuckles, which results in them looking even more bloodshot and watery than usual. "Look, did I ever tell you what happened between me and Sofia Barbieri?"

Michael's knowledge of Miss Barbieri begins and ends with her scowling presence in her family's flower shop a couple of streets away, where he'd once wasted a copper on a bunch of daisies that she thrust so violently into its paper wrapping that all of the flowers' stems snapped and more than half of them lost their petals. He shakes his head.

"When I was your age, I... I thought I was in love with her. She was friends with Aly, Cait and Lu, after a fashion, and not one of them really gave me the time of day back then. But I persisted, followed them around no matter how many times they told me to piss off and find my own friends to spend time with.

"I should have done, but at the time I thought I was showing Sofia my devotion. She didn't see it that way. Not at all. She told me I was being creepy, and, looking back, I imagine I was. Especially considering the poems I..." He cringes, and then says hurriedly, "Anyway, Aly arranged a party for me at the Antler when I came of age, and at the end of the night – when we were all considerably the worse for wear, as I'm sure you can imagine – Sofia kissed me!

"My first kiss from the woman I'd been in love with for four years? I couldn't eat or sleep for two days, I was so ecstatically happy."

Dylan trails off into silence, and then stares intently down at his ledger, as though eager to get caught up in his columns of figures once more. Michael is used his brother's meandering tales, but this one seems even more pointless than most; so much so that he can't help but think that it hasn't yet reached its conclusion.

"What happened then?" he prompts.

"It transpired it had all been a mistake," Dylan says, eyes still downcast. "She'd been drunk enough to confuse me for Gabs' brother, Antonio, and I'd been drunk enough not to notice that she'd been calling me by someone else's name. She made it emphatically clear that that kiss never would have happened otherwise, and that there was no chance of one ever happening again.

"I was crushed, of course. There were times when I believed I'd never get over it, and my heart would never mend, but it happened, nonetheless. Probably took another four years, all told, but I got back to my feet in the end."

That appears to be the genuine end of his story, but its point still isn't entirely clear. _It's perfectly possible for someone to reject you even after you've spent years pining for them?_ Michael had been aware of that beforehand and hadn't needed the first-hand confirmation.

"Was that meant to be reassuring?" he asks.

"I suppose so," Dylan says, shrugging. "More than anything, I just wanted you to know that I survived it all more or less intact." His cheeks redden with a blush. "My heart included. At the time, I thought I'd never find anyone else I might come to feel the same way for, but... but, eventually, I think I did. Have. Well, you know what I mean."

Stumbling and totally unnecessary attempts at confession aside – because, honestly, Michael has _eyes_ and _ears_ , though he has often had reason to rue their existence of late for that very reason – Michael has yet to be reassured by anything his brother has shared with him thus far.

"So what you're telling me is to keep my chin up, I might meet someone else I like as much as Emilia in twelve years time?"

"Oh." Dylan blinks at Michael owlishly. "No, that wasn't what I was aiming for, exactly. I just... You should keep an open mind, Mikey. I think love can come to you when you least expect it, and even when you've given up hope of it entirely."


End file.
